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There’s an asteroid out there more expensive than everything Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Donald Trump own put together, and it’s been floating around in space for centuries.
While the asteroid costs a whopping $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 ($10 quintillion) – the most costly thing to ever exist – what is really baffling is that it was discovered 172 years ago.
The journey to capture the asteroid
Last year, space agency NASA announced that it was going to set off for the asteroid named 16 Psyche, which is likely a mixture of rock and metal, with metal making up between 30 percent to 60 percent of its volume.
It’s thought to contain precious metals including gold, iron and nickel, which are worth an eye-watering amount.
An illustration of 16 Psyche. (Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology)
In a statement released in July, Nasa said: “Teams of engineers and technicians are working almost around the clock to ensure the orbiter is ready to journey 2.5 billion miles to a metal-rich asteroid that may tell us more about planetary cores and how planets form.”
And the journey has begun; the spacecraft was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on 13 October, 2023.
When will the spacecraft reach 16 Psyche?
The vessel is expected to fly by Mars in May 2026, using the planet’s gravity as a slingshot to increase velocity, and if all goes as planned, in July 2029 the asteroid Psyche’s gravity will capture the spacecraft after a journey of about 2.2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers).
The spacecraft will then conduct its prime mission, gathering science data while orbiting the asteroid from August 2029 to November 2031.
But NASA has revealed that it was in the year 1852 that an Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis actually discovered the asteroid.
The full flight system, including the spacecraft’s two five-panel solar arrays, is about the size of a singles tennis court. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The asteroid’s origins
The name 16 Psyche references the fact it was the 16th asteroid to be discovered, as well as Pysche, the goddess of the soul in ancient Greek mythology, often depicted as a butterfly-winged female figure.
The space organization listed some cool facts about it – one of those being that it orbits the Sun in the outer part of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it is approximately three times farther from the Sun than Earth is.
NASA has invested approximately $1.2 billion to develop, launch, and operate the Psyche mission.
This includes about $131 million in launch services for Psyche and the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technology demonstration – the cost for developing and operating DSOC is about $206 million.
It’s an awful lot of money being splashed on a rock, but just how valuable could the discovery be to mankind?